Someone Once Said
by thousanth
Summary: The Force Commander watches as Davian Thule is restored. Dawn of War 2.


I don't usually write for WH40K, so this is practice I guess! Much needed practice. :P I should probably point out that I'm using the name the DoW2 novel gave to the Force Commander - Aramus.

The prompt was: "Someone once said."

* * *

Someone once told him that to serve the Chapter even after death was the highest honour to which a battle-brother could aspire. To die in the service of the Emperor and yet live again to continue the fight was a glory that went unmatched. Except that to become a Dreadnought one did not quite die, not completely. Force Commander Aramus stood in the repair hangar of the Litany of Fury and watched as the Techmarines worked on the Dreadnought body of what had once been Captain Davian Thule.

Surrounded by the flying sparks of the Techmarines' holy instruments of restoration, the Dreadnought Thule loomed massive and imposing amidst the haze of the incense and the drone of the sacred rites of repair. After their last encounter with the Eldar, the damage to his plating had been extensive. A lucky shot from a Fire Prism had seared across an entire section of his left flank, leaving the thick plating of his armour warped and melted. Beneath the blackened ceramite, through a gap that had been melted right through the armour, Aramus could see the pump and flicker of the dreadnought's internal workings. It felt invasive, blasphemous, to look and he turned his gaze away, concentrating instead on the honour markings and purity seals that decorated the front of the war machine. They had come very close to losing Thule for a second time today.

Aramus had been there the day that the legendary Captain Thule fell to the claws of the Great Devourer and the shame of it still hung around those that had fought, and failed, to save him. Davian Thule was the hero of the Kronos campaign, a man who thought nothing of putting his own men before himself, of dying in service to the God-Emperor. He was an Astartes that other Astartes could look up to, and they would have followed him into the Eye itself. To lose him to such blasphemous abominations as the Tyrannids had been a shocking blow to the company's morale.

But death had not claimed Davian Thule. Although it had cost them the lives of several battle-brothers their Captain had been restored to them in the form of the hulking dreadnought before which Aramus now stood. The power of a Dreadnought was formidable and terrible, a single one of their kind the equal of any squad of battle brothers. Reserved for the most honoured of fallen heroes, those that still held a flicker of life within their broken bodies, the dreadnought armour cradled within it the sarcophagus of the fallen brother, allowing him to continue in his service to the God-Emperor, encased in thick layers of plating and steel, and carrying weaponry that not even a battle-brother of the Astartes could heft.

Aramus watched as the Techmarines circled Thule's body, the tech-servitors following at their heels swinging censers of sacred incense as they chanted the litanies of restoration. The great Dreadnought flexed its power fist, the mechanisms that drove its thick claws whining as each finger curled and straightened. Becoming a Dreadnought was an honour beyond compare, creating an almost unkillable mechanical warrior, but it took from the man within something of his humanity.

The Chaplains called it an honour and encouraged the veneration of the Chapter's Dreadnoughts. _Feel no grief for our brother-Captain_, they had said, _for he walks again in the glory of the Emperor._ Aramus had believed them, still does of course. _He may be a little different now,_ the Apothecaries had said, and would not be drawn further on the matter.

"Gabriel? Is that you?" The Dreadnought's voice was a deep, mechanical buzz that drowned out the drone of the tech-servitor's litanies and made the Techmarines pause respectfully before continuing their work.

Aramus realised that Thule had mistaken him for his old friend Captain Angelos, an uncomfortable tendency the honoured Dreadnought had exhibited from time to time. "No, sir," he replied. "It is Force Commander Aramus. I came to oversee your repairs, and to thank you for your contribution to the battle yesterday."

Aramus always found it awkward to speak to Thule. When the Dreadnought had been a Captain, a flesh and blood battle-brother, he had been inspiring and charismatic, a brother to each of them and a beloved leader of them all. Not only that, but a hero of countless campaigns too. Compared to the honours that Aramus had accrued in his comparatively short length of service, Thule was a legend. And now, as a Dreadnought, he had become something even more than that. He made Aramus feel small and awkward, like an Initiate who had yet to even earn his full set of armour.

"Ah, Gabriel," Thule continued. "I am well, brother. I am ready to fight again. I carry with me the secrets of Kronos, Gabriel, and I shall not fail."

The Techmarines were staring at the Force Commander, waiting and watching for his reaction to the Dreadnought's words. Lost in the memories of another lifetime, the Dreadnought saluted him proudly and stamped its heavy feet in anticipation of battle.

An honour, thought Aramus. Truly, an honour.


End file.
